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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Need to get my emotions in check',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/03/10.jpg" alt="A fallen tree across the sidewalk and through a fence" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		I keep hearing about how genealogy and indexing are important to the church.
		However, I had no idea what indexing even is.
		Today, I learned, and it turns out it&apos;s rather related to genealogy, which is why it&apos;s so important to the church.
		Basically, there&apos;s a bunch of historical documents in possession of the church.
		I&apos;m not sure whether these are public records that the church has copied or if these are records of the church itself, but I&apos;m guessing it&apos;s some of each.
		The documents, being paper, are a pain to search through.
		So the indexers are given photographs of the documents, which they then read and type the contents of, sending these back to the church.
		The church then makes those documents available digitally to the genealogists within the church.
		Thus, indexing makes the job of the genealogists easier and more efficient.
	</p>
	<p>
		Why genealogy even matters in the first place is still a mystery, though I do have some speculation to make on that in a bit.
		But first, more related information.
	</p>
	<p>
		Someone got up and talked about how Yahweh&apos;s plan is all about family.
		According to the speaker, in eternity, we&apos;ll be &quot;sealed and welded together with our families&quot;.
		Ugh.
		I&apos;m not sure I can take spending an eternity together with my vindictive mother.
		Other things I learned include that the church performs baptisms on behalf of the dead and that to get into heaven, you absolutely must be baptised.
		As they say that everyone is going to heaven, we can thus extrapolate that they plan to perform a baptism for each person that has ever lived.
		So is genealogy important because they&apos;re trying to lean who they&apos;ll be spending eternity with?
		That seems sort of strange.
		I mean, they&apos;ll meet them once they get to heaven, right?
		So maybe there&apos;s more to it.
		The baptisms of the dead seem to require a live, human body to act as a proxy.
		Does that proxy need to be a descendant of the person who has passed away?
		If so, that would very much explain why they need to know their ancestry.
	</p>
	<p>
		On the topic of everyone getting welded to their family for eternity, does that mean that <strong>*everyone*</strong> will be stuck together?
		I mean, we all supposedly descend from Adam and Eve.
		That means that everyone is related by blood, with the exception of Adam and Even themselves, making us <strong>*all*</strong> family.
		And not only do I think marriage counts as strongly as blood relations to the church, but also, Eve was created from a rib extracted from Adam, meaning that Eve is basically Adam&apos;s daughter.
		And to add to that, if Adam is bound for eternity to Adam and Eve&apos;s children and Eve is bound for eternity to Adam and Eve&apos;s children, that makes them indirectly bound to one another anyway.
		So again, everyone gets stuck together.
		So at that point, I&apos;ve got to wonder what it even means for us to be stuck with our families.
		A better way to look at it is that we&apos;re stuck with the entire human race.
	</p>
	<p>
		Today, after the main service, we got split up by gender.
		Or at least, the adults did.
		I wasn&apos;t sure where to go, so I was just going to head home.
		I mean, I didn&apos;t belong in the group of only men nor did I belong in the group of only women.
		The new convert that came over on Thursday said I could go to whichever I felt more comfortable going to, though with my body as it is, I&apos;m not comfortable with either.
		Once I get fixed up, I think I&apos;d be comfortable with either, though still, I wouldn&apos;t belong in either group.
		It&apos;s clear that while the people (at least the ones I&apos;ve spoken with) are queer-friendly, it&apos;s also clear that the church as a whole is not.
		There are men, and there are women.
		There is no one else.
		They each have specific roles.
		It&apos;s not a world an in-between-er like me belongs in.
		Next, the new convert recommended I go to the children&apos;s class, which they said they themself learned much from even as an adult, so I headed over there.
		Wow.
		Right away, I saw the brainwashing.
		Before the class even began, I saw painted above the blackboard the words &quot;I Know The Scriptures Are True&quot;; capitalisation used by them, not added by me.
		It was very &quot;you will believe&quot;ish.
		No questioning.
	</p>
	<p>
		When class began, they sang a short song, or to be more accurate, I think it was the second of three verses of a longer song, but I can&apos;t swear to it.
		It doesn&apos;t matter the details though.
		The point is that there was a very short message the children sang.
		The entire class revolved around interacting with that song in various ways.
		Much of it seemed like disorganised and pointless, but that was actually a misdirection.
		The purpose was to get the children to remember that song fragment.
		By the end of the class, even though I never sang and never intended to learn the song, I knew the song.
		I made it home, and still remembered it.
		I had to intentionally drown out the song with another to finally stop it from playing in my head.
		Even then, wile I&apos;ve lost the tune, as of the time of writing this, I still know every word of what they were repeatedly singing.
	</p>
	<p>
		The teacher was also telling them that if the only way to get into heaven is to get baptised, which I briefly mentioned above because of the relevance.
		It was only once I attended this class that I get that titbit though.
		The teacher also pushed a pretty dangerous idea: that the scriptures are law.
		To be clear, they weren&apos;t recommending the scriptures <strong>*become*</strong> law, but making the claim that they already are.
		This has got to be the type of place that religious zealots that deny reality come from.
		I&apos;m sure some if not many of these children will be mostly balanced when they grow up, but some will grip to their religious beliefs so hard they reject proven science.
	</p>
	<p>
		At the end of this singing session, the children divided up into age groups to go to other classes, but by the time I realised what was happening, those other classes had begun.
		The teacher came over and we spoke for a while.
		They seemed mostly normal, even if their song-based lesson was obviously a brainwashing attempt.
		After we talked, I ended up going home because I felt awkward disturbing the other classes that had already started.
		I regret it though.
		I should have tried to quietly enter one of the other rooms and seen what other sort of brainwashing was going down.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I hadn&apos;t looked into the efficiency of artificial neural networks.
			I suppose it makes sense that they don&apos;t allow for easy and efficient emulation though.
			Biological neural networks evolved through a process that doesn&apos;t always provide great efficiency.
			There are many examples, both in our own species and in other species, in which our bodies clearly do things the wrong way.
			I wouldn&apos;t doubt that our brains are a bit of a jumble like that too.
			When we build an artificial neural network, we&apos;re emulating an inefficient system, so our emulation had to perform actions that are inherently inefficient.
		</p>
		<p>
			Like you said though, computers are good at a different set of problems than we are.
			So with artificial neural networks, we&apos;re able to emulate our own capabilities on a machine that normally doesn&apos;t do what we do very well.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="spiteful">
	<h2>Spiteful</h2>
	<p>
		The head manager got angry again today.
		Their frustration made me feel a bit better.
		I was even mildly happy until they calmed down.
		At first, I didn&apos;t think much of it.
		The boss has been a thorn in pretty much all our sides for as long as I can remember.
		It took me years to feel the effect of it myself, due likely to living with my mother at the time.
		She&apos;s a bigger pill than the head manager ever will be.
		But once I wasn&apos;t feeling her toxicity, due to he no longer having absolute power in our relationship, the boss&apos;s started to show through to me.
		They finally hit the final straw with me, so it&apos;s only natural that I wouldn&apos;t be wishing them well any more.
	</p>
	<p>
		After a while though, I realised that I&apos;m becoming spiteful.
		I&apos;ve been thinking a few ill thoughts, but disregarding them as spiteful and moving on.
		But now it&apos;s not just a few stray thoughts.
		I, myself, am becoming spiteful too.
		I don&apos;t like feeling this way.
		It was a major mistake to rest during my last break from school.
		I needed the rest, but I needed to escape this toxic hellhole even more.
	</p>
	<p>
		Come next break, I need to keep my priorities straight.
		That said, the job hunt isn&apos;t exactly the top priority this time.
		I need to work on me and I need to work on my body.
		I need to be able to feel more comfortable in my own skin.
		With that, I should be more stable emotionally, but also, I have no guarantee that I&apos;ll get a job during that next, short break.
		However, I can almost guarantee that if I ignore the job hunt for a bit, I can find a dermatologist and get this facial hair problem dealt with.
		I don&apos;t need to finish the treatment during the break, and it&apos;ll in fact take several months at least to get it fixed.
		I just need to get a clinic found and get the first appointment set up.
		After that, I need to look for a voice coach.
		Are there any within my travel range?
		I have no idea.
		Next might be the job hunt, but I&apos;m not sure.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
